News | Smith Lab

Overdue congrats

To Stuti for a successful Masters Thesis!

To Erica for her Einstein Edge participation!

To Adam & Kenny for a new paper!

To Daniela for a successful Honors Thesis!

Kyle comments on habits in a Washington Post article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/12/21/habit-formation-practice-tips-brain

Elizabeth!

Congrats to Elizabeth Bien on her first lab publication!

Erica!

Congrats to Erica Townsend for her first official publication!!! With kudos to coauthors Beth & Kenny!

Bon Voyage Connie & Marco!

Onward and upwards!

Preprint

Erica’s first (amazing) paper is online! With sweet contributions from Beth & Kenny!

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.22.521615v1

Marco

Marco Leira has joined the lab (belated post)! He’s kicking butt. He will be a great grad student for someone in the future.

Yay!

Congratulations to Erica for being an Outstanding Women in Learning Award Recipient at this year’s IBNS annual meeting!

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New Person!

Excited to have Stuti Argawal join as a graduate student for Fall 2022!

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Paper

Fun collaboration paper with Wilder Doucette and Jibran Khokhar using chronic manipulation of ventral pallidum to regulate diet-induced weight gain (in press). What we expected: VP inhibition would reduce weight gain. What we found: weight gain was increased. Do we know why: no. Should there be caution when using established acute manipulation effects to create chronic manipulation treatments. Yes?

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Onward and upward

This summer of 2021 we say goodby and good luck to two figureheads of the lab. Beth Smedley is now off to a postdoc at Temple, and Kenny Amaya to a postdoc at Tufts. Both have exceptionally bright futures. And both have had a hand in making nearly everything in the lab work for many years, being utterly amazing as people and scientists all the while. They will be sorely missed.

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Kenny’s accepted paper is now online! See publications tab. Congrats Kenny!

And not only that, the reviews (very useful reading) are online with it as well. Yep.

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Piece featuring some quotes about Adam Crego’s work

Here. Enjoy. Enjoy!

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Award revisited: Jon in full web form for his incredible award!

https://sbn.org/awards/wc-young-recent-graduate-award.aspx

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NRSA

Congrats to Smedley for winner her F31 NRSA!

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Award!

Huge congrats to Jon for winning this years WC Young Recent Graduate Award in Behavioral Endocrinology offered by the Soc Behav Neuroend!!! Jon will be giving a presentation at the summer conference as a result.

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Baby!

Wonderful news that Silvia has a lovely new baby Guillermo! We are all so happy for her!

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Victory: Kenny & Jeff

Congrats to Kenny and Jeff for their paper acceptance. Uh oh, a habit might not really be a habit depending on how reward devaluation was done. Lovely work.

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Lab holiday cookies! Beth is apprehensive and a little worried, Kenny has a bum ankle, and Kyle is just super happy.

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Victory: Crego

Congrats to Adam for his publication acceptance (J Nsci) – hard work on that one!

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Kenny is missing a cue in his task

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Welcome Silvia to the lab!!!

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10.2.19 Moneybags Amaya

Cool NINDS feature on Kenny!

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8.26.19 Moneybags Amaya

Congratulations to Kenny for getting an F99/K00 grant!! Huge accomplishment (and well deserved)!

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6.14.19 Cover

Cool beans: Smedley designed and got the NLM cover for her paper!

Go to journal home page - Neurobiology of Learning and Memory

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5.3.19 Congrats to Dr. Adam Crego!

Adam successfully defended his PhD thesis “The Role of Phasic Activity in the Dorsolateral Striatum in Regulating Action Vigor and Habits”!

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1.5.19

Welcome to the lab Mugisha!

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6.20.18 Alex Brown is Boston bound!

Our lab manager Alex heads off to MIT to work with Kay Tye! Congrats Alex!

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12.19.17 Interview with STAT/Boston Globe

Q&A: Lighting up the brain to understand the darkness of addiction

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11.1.17 The Scientist – Scientist to Watch (watch lab members really)

https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/50647/title/Kyle-Smith-Shines-a-Light-on-Addiction/

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10.5.17 Fantastic

Several people have pointed out our Sci Am article appearance in Captain Fantastic! Fantastic!

[screenshot: Eric Burguiere]

[hands: captain fantastic’s hands]

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8.25.17

Steve’s paper featured in Neuronline. Go team salt!

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8.10.17 Alyssa DiLeo is shipping up to Boston!

Our lab manager Alyssa heads off to Tufts for grad school! Congrats Alyssa!

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Smith Lab Rewind…

The dawn of Kyle’s sciencing. With Rob Smith.

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4.14.17

Graduate student Adam Crego was awarded an Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher award from the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement for Learning. Nice job!

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4.8.17 Dartmouth Neuroscience Day 2017

Dartmouth welcomed Dr. Ann Graybiel, Kyle’s former PI, as a keynote speaker. Jeff, Fabian, and Alyssa presented posters of their work and Adam gave a talk on habits.

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8.23.16 Conferencing

Smith lab all up in your face at SFN, Winter Brain, Pavlovian this year. SFN posters: 720.06. Exploring a causal role for the dorsolateral striatum in action-reward contingency shifts. A. C. CREGO, K. S. SMITH 720.05. Optogenetic stimulation of the dorsolateral striatum increases performance automaticity in cue-driven and response-driven tasks. F. ŠTOCEK, A. C. G. CREGO, A. G. MARCHUK, K. S. SMITH

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7.6.16

Welcome Kenny & Alyssa to the lab!

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4.13.16

Congrats to Adam for his Grad Poster award!

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11.19.15

Some news pieces on the Chang et al. paper in EJN by the Daily Mail and Tech Times and ALN Mag.

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10.25.15 First lab paper in press!

DREADDs, recordings, ventral pallidum, sign-tracking, the works. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejn.13103/abstract

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8.25.15 The place to see and be seen: our SFN Posters

Sun, Oct 18, 4:00 – 5:00 PM 255.08/W36 – Disconnection of ventral pallidum and nucleus accumbens shell with DREADDs enhances sign-tracking in rats Sun, Oct 18, 1:00 – 2:00 PM 255.09/W37 – Inhibiting ventral pallidum disrupts adaptive salt-seeking behavior in rats Mon, Oct 19, 4:00 – 5:00 PM 444.08/BB90 – Shifting the neural compass: reversible optical disruption of the head direction signal In vivo Wed, Oct 21, 1:00 – 5:00 PM DP09.05/DP05 – Investigating the role of striatum in habits with optogenetics in a plus maze paradigm

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7.7.15 To-Be-Doctor-in-Training

Kate on to UC Boulder.

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2.29.15 Best Cake Ever

A happy lab birthday to Steve

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2.27.15

Congrats to Kenny & Alex on successful theses defenses!

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2.16.15 Crego a go go

Adam featured in the Dartmouth Community Newsletter

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1.12.15 ORF

ORF Austrian public radio interview on our work, and Swiss Radio piece, by Madeleine Amberger

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12.30.14 Salt

Radio piece by Kelly Prime, credit to The Salt Institute

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7.2.14

NPR guest appearance on habits (Kathleen Dunn show, Wisconsin).

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5.21.14

Scientific American cover article on habits….all up in your ~~business~~ news stands. Inside, Smith has been rendered into lovable cartoon form.

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1.27.14

New article by Smith & Graybiel reviewing current trends in habit research, with some ideas about what brain activity tells us about how habits are constructed. This is in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience as part of a special forthcoming issue on “Neural circuits underlying emotion and motivation: Insights from optogenetics and pharmacogenetics” edited by Lobo & Ilango.

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9.3.13

Story in Discover Magazine about recent study with Ann Graybiel.

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8.6.13

Dartmouth Now profile

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7.29.13

Vid Neuron article appeared in an issue and was accompanied by a “video abstract”, which was fun and an honor. Please to enjoy.

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7.18.13

Kyle advises grandparents about habit breaking.

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7.8.13

Wall Street Journal thingy about our recent work.

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5.30.13 New paper

Paper on chronic recordings of cortical and striatal habit sites, and blockade of habit acquisition, finally done and accepted @ Neuron. These experiments were a bear to conduct – over 6k recorded cells in the end. But worth it (I think?). MIT news , R&D Mag , Technology.org , ScienceDaily

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3.29.13

MIT newsletter about some work with Dr. Ann Graybiel.

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1.7.13 Forbes.

To ring in the new year on a nice news note, the PNAS study was ranked #3 in the Forbes list of The Top 10 Brain Science and Psychology Stories of 2012.

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